Police and Law Enforcement Books

A real forehead klunker!! Must have hit my forhead on my desk at least 3 times per chapter as I fell asleep. Author lacks ability to lend practical examples and ways to implement theories in a police environment with Unions. I often find myself 2/3 through a chapter and having to go back through the lists of lists to remember what the chapter was about. I would like to work at one of these utopian departments the Author writes of where everybody gets together to make democratic decisions. Must have citizen patrols. Author also enjoys use of vocabulary, so for the author, the book is "trite". I have over 19 years police experience and find the book painful and not very helpful. I also question the author's experience in command position and feel it may be more from Academia PD. Two thumbs down.

The book was used as part of a week long class and complimented it well. (I don't know if I would have gotten as much from it just reading the book alone.)

The book isn't going to teach you everything you need to know about being a supervisor, but it makes good points and has gook information.

I was forced to read this book as part of a promotional process..... The book is very disjointed and should be titled "Fifteen Essays on Police Supervision." The entire book reads like a book written entirely to test from in an academic arena. From an instructional stand point the book is fantastic to test from each chapter exposes the reader to concepts and a multitude of lists that the instructor may pull questions from. The problem being that each chapter extols the virtues of the listed concept and why it is the most important factor in supervision. Unfortunately, two chapters later there is a new "Responsibility" that is the most important to police supervision, and a new reordered list. The author even makes the error of defining terms with the term used as a definition for itself?

In short avoid this book unless it is required reading, or you intend to test from it on a chapter by chapter basis.... Even then there are far better titles to expose students to.

If you need this book to tell you that you should have ethics and values, then maybe you shouldn't be in law enforcement in the first place.

I don't know how many ways Mr. Whisenand has to say the same thing OVER AND OVER AGAIN. 319 pages? The same points could have been made in about 70. Maybe the publisher had a minimum page requirement for Mr. Whisenand. It's a bit hypocritical as Mr. Whisenand writes on page 89 that "A concise report expresses all the necessary information in as few words as possible..." He should practice what he preaches.

Which leads me to my next point. What is Mr. Whisenand's real world law enforcement experience anyway? In the book, it lists that he was an officer with the LAPD and a reserve deputy sheriff with the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Curiously, no where does it list how many years he did at each or the ranks he held. He also does not relate any of his own experiences as a PO, only that of others. Hmmmmm...

I only gave this a rating of one star because it won't let you put in zero stars.

This book is just plain bad. Writer has very hard time getting anything across clearly..way to wordy for the simple messages that he is trying to get across. Avoid if at all possible unless you like to sleep!! or if you have to read it for a test...even then not worth it!!

If you're looking for a lot of pictures of police cars, this book is ideal. Photos make up the bulk of the book, and fortunately most are all of good quality too. You'll also find basic facts and information such as police vehicle history and the roles of Ford, Dodge and Chevrolet, but because the book is mostly photos, a lot of your reading will be in the captions. Unfortunately like previous reviewers implied, the captions are really cheesy... as if they were an afterthought and the author only had ten minutes to come up with them. And the proof editor must have been out on vaction when the book went into publication, because I noticed some of the captions are totally unrelated to the photos. I think much more time should have been put into arranging and editing the book, such as getting references accurate and leaving out redundant pictures from the same departments, but overall I'm glad I purchased it because the quality and abundance of photos make this book a welcome addition to my library. The title is appropriately named "Police Cars" because that's exactly what you'll see--page after page--when you buy this book.

I was very disappointed with this book. As a police historian, I am always eager to review new books that detail the graphic history of police cars. When you review this book however, you get the feeling that the book was "rushed" to print without checking for detail and accuracy. I have personally counted 16 incorrect references to police cars pictured in this book. As an example, on page 34, the author has a very distinctive full color picture of a Louisiana State Police Ford Mustang, but the caption refers to the car as "belonging to the Florida Highway Patrol". Another example is on page 70, where the author refers to the "all-black" New York State Police Chevy Caprices. The New York State Police utilized a dark blue (not black) Chevy Caprice that year. My feeling is that if you are going to write and publish a book about police cars, you first need to do your homework and conduct research to ensure complete accuracy. This type of book is alway very appealing to police car enthusiasts and historians alike. I am sure it was not the authors intent to mislead or confuse the reader with these inaccuracies. I hope a revised edition is planned that will correct the mistakes prevalent throughout this book. Very disappointing!!!

Kerr has compiled some interesting photos of police cars but the overall quality of the book is not as good as some of the others already on the market. Many of the photos are poorly reproduced, and there is an overabundance of NYC cars. A couple of the photos are wrongly captioned, i.e. he identifies a Ford as a Dodge. It is also obvious that Kerr is not a U.S. police officer as some of his terminology is different than used here.

As a prior Police Officer I often look for picture books on the subject. This book was worse than poorly done. Grainy quality photos with wrong/idiotic captions. The one thing that made me laugh out loud was the picture of an unmarked cruiser without any cop detailing at all (SO IN EFFECT IT WAS A PHOTO OF A CHEVY IN A PARKING LOT). How stupid!

I was a contributing photographer for this book. At the last minute, a major contributor failed to meet his agreement. I was contacted through my website, CopCruisers, and agreed to submit photographs in 24 hours. When the pictures were submitted, the publisher agreed to select the photographs and allow me to write the captions. Next thing I knew, the book was in print. The author, Ian Kerr, could not have had time to identify the pictures, much less do the captions justice. I believe the editor/publisher was commited to a delivery date and cut every corner to meet it. The result was a less then satisfactory outcome. For my debut, I was very unhappy. Publishing is a business, but this English publishing company went too far.

This book is great. It gives the reader a look at all the departments in the US Government that deal with law enforcement. Even angencies that some people didnt know about.

I found this book to be of almost no value as a resource for finding a federal law enforcement job. It's fine as a history book, but not as a job search resource because almost all of the information has been out of date for years. Many of the jobs listed don't exist anymore, and there's no information on how to compete for a federal job. It was probably a good book when it came out eight years ago - if you were looking for a history of only the largest agencies - but not if you were looking for a job.

"Federal Jobs in Law Enforcement" is another example of an ancient career book that should be taken off the shelf. Entry requirements, application procedures, training programs, and even the agencies have changed dramatically since this book was published in 1992. A much better choice is "Guide to Careers in Federal Law Enforcement," by Thomas H. Ackerman, which is by far the best book ever written on federal law enforcement careers. A good resource for history of the agencies is "Handbook of Federal Police and Investigative Agencies," by Donald A. Torres.

I will keep this short. This book is not worth your hard earned money. I do not recommend it as the test questions are simple and basic and the job descriptions are no different than the information you can get from each agencies web page. Keep on searching as this book does not deliver its value.

This is probably the best book for the TEA exam. However, the book is plagued with many many many typos. The editor must have edited it in the dark... Some typos render the questions completely unreadable. This book is worth buying for the difficulty level. However, if a question seems like nonsense, a typo is likely to blame. If it weren't for the difficulty of the questions, this book wouldn't be worthy of kindling.

Most in the know who see the byline of W.E. Fairbairn think of the former British Commando and Shanghai Police Chief who was instrumental in saving the lives of uncounted SAS and OSS operatives with the hand-to-hand combat training he delivered in their training camps. Richard Dunlop said of Fairbairn:

"All of us who were taught by Major Fairbairn soon realized that he had an honest dislike for anything that smacked of decency in fighting."

The idea was to win a fight and win it quickly.

This book (if you look closely at the cover) was written by one Richard Fairburn (who I do not know) and neither he nor Fairbairn's memory are well-served by the mistake that this book has been attributed to Fairbairn. This book was published in 1994. Fiarbairn died in 1960 and it's unlikely his estate would have waited this long to offer up any previously unpublished works.

Dick knows his stuff and has been around long enough to give sage advice. This book covers all versions of the police rifle whereas so many other books concentrate on one aspect of LE usage of longarms be it a "patrol rifle" snipers rifle or SMG.

Fairburn's book gets down into the 'been there bent that' of using long arms in the field, a lot of lessons learned went into the book. He also touches on ancillary equipment, bags, bipods, scopes, binos etc. He includes the generic ballistics tables that are becoming so common in manuals of this type as well as a light discussion of cartridges. None of the material is covered in an overly technical manner and it is obviously written from the perspective of a po' officer working for a po' agency. An unfortunate, but all too common, event these days. As such, he gives tips on using the cheap new breed of "unassault" rifles (levers and bolts) as well as little used models such as Marlin Camp series.

He touches on all aspects of police rifle use, patrol, sniper, etc., and gives enough information to get a newbie started in the right direction. If your background and training only consists of pistols this book should be on your shelf. An added nice touch is the extensive and well done targets included in the last pages. Many will never use them but for that unfortunate po' officer (or lawful citizen) they do make for inexpensive training.

this book im sure applys for some US laws, but is written for UK police. would be nice if that was stated in the discription

An adequate text for the untrained law enforcement officer (LEO), but an insufficient reference for the experienced LEO. Dark and shaded black and white photographs poorly highlight the details of some mechanisms discussed . There is little insight and discussion about the substances used to create explosive mixtures, as well, as their toxicity and volatility. The book mainly focuses on military munitions and field tactics, and it provides a minimal reference to civilian-urban applications. I was disappointed when I paid $18.00; I expected a more in-depth presentation of the art and science of booby traps.

While the information this book offered was potentially valuable, it proved to be long winded and a little hard to stay focused on.
A seasoned vetern in this field may find the text quite understandable, but I think someone considering the corrections field may find this text a little intiminating, although I am sure that this is not the intention. BR>In addition, the print of the book is small and the print quality on several pages were blurry and very hard to read.
Frankly, if I had saved my receipt...I would have returned it.

To be honest, there is nothing wrong with Codeword Dictionary. It provides the Codewords for a great many operations and provides a brief description of each of them. It is useful on occasion to look up references that you find in other works, however most of the information is basic and is usually included in most other authors works on any particular topic. So while useful on occasion, you can easily get along without it.

Although this topic is by nature interesting--the story of the world's first detective--the book is so poorly written that the writing style frequently detracts from the interest and confuses. Vidocq was a criminal turned crook-catcher ala England's Jonathan Wilde, with the possible difference that he may have been more honest (although this is by no means sure). Certainly an interesting subject. The writer's assumptions pose a problem, however. Perhaps, Vidocq is well known in the U.K., but as an American, I had never heard of him before. I HAD heard of Jonathan Wilde, but it is conceivable that others hadn't. Yet Morton frequently assumes the reader has knowledge that he or she may not have. His chapters scramble all over the place in time, so that you are continually mentally shuttling back and forth in your attempts to make sense of everything he mentions. His paragraphs are particulary ill-formed. One time I spent 10 minutes or so trying to figure out the identity of a person whose name he just threw into the middle of a paragraph about something else entirely. I never did figure out who the person was. Sometimes his footnotes had no discernable connection to the information they footnoted. And there were plenty of grammatical errors, the most notable, one in which he turned Napoleon into a woman by means of a misplaced modifier.